A woman who answered the phone there Tuesday said no one was available to comment.

The work, which had begun early Monday, called for trimming a stand of palms and melaleuca trees along Southwest 57th Avenue, Sharkey said.

“It is something we do every June before hurricane season,” he said.

Sharkey said Green Horizons also contracted to do the work last year.

When news of the accident reached Federation Gardens residents, “They were very upset,” Sharkey said.

“I have never heard of anything like this,” said Sharkey. “Our hearts go out to the families. This was a tragic accident, a terrible incident.”

It was immediately evident to arriving police that Gutierrez had died, he said.

“This is very tragic,” said Engle. “This was a person just trying to make a living, and his life was taken in the blink of an eye.

“The scene was gruesome, to see what the machine could do to a human being,” Engle said.

Engle said there were no witnesses to what police are treating as an accidental death.

Condell Eastmond, Fort Lauderdale-based area director of the U.S. Labor Department’s Occupational Safety & Health Administration, said inspectors were on the scene Monday evening, and were continuing their investigation Tuesday.

OSHA is charged with setting and enforcing workplace standards.

Nearby resident Cheryl Appel said she went outside to check the mail late Monday afternoon and saw a landscape worker in an orange vest running down the street from the wood chipper to where another man was working.

He ran into a fence near where another worker was using a chain saw to cut up branches and "collapsed against it, his knees buckled," she said.

"He looked like he was in shock," she said. "It was obvious something happened."

Not long after that, police arrived and cordoned off the scene, she said.

"You just think, his family probably got up today, and it was a normal day," she said. "It's gut wrenching."

The death is under investigation, but "everything is leading [police] to believe it was a work accident," Engle said.

Counseling was being made available for crew members who responded to the scene, as is typical for incidents like this one, Engle said.

Crews blocked off Southwest 57th Street at Pine Island Road for about five hours, Engle said. Pine Island Road was not affected.

This is not the first incident involving a wood chipper in South Florida. Jose DeJesus Velasquez, 53, of Oakland Park, got entangled in a wood chipper while working for Twin Tree Service at Camino Del Mar Country Club west of Boca Raton on May 29, 1997.

Nearly 10 years prior to the 1997 incident, a 21-year-old worker from Hollywood named Alan Douglas Barnes lost his right arm when it was caught in a machine that shreds tree limbs in Plantation.